


Moonlight

by silverstarsandroses



Series: Moonlight [1]
Category: Aladdin (2019)
Genre: F/M, Love at First Sight, Romance, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-27 15:35:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20048401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverstarsandroses/pseuds/silverstarsandroses
Summary: Aladdin isn't captured after returning Jasmine's bracelet. Instead, he returns the next night, intending to return her hairpin, and maybe also to find an excuse to keep coming back.





	Moonlight

**Author's Note:**

> It's been literal years since I've written fanfiction. I've been taking my own stuff too seriously lately, so I felt like doing something fun and not-too-serious.

Aladdin takes a different way into the palace the second time. It takes longer to find a way over the palace walls, but he can’t risk getting caught going through the main gates. He scales the walls and darts through passageways clearly only used by guards, until finally, he ends up in a garden.

The moon is full, and it silvers the garden into something from a fairy tale. The fountain spills liquid moonlight, the flowers seem to glow, and the stone of the balcony up above almost glitters. But more beautiful than the garden, already more magical than any moonlight could ever make her, Dalis is there, waiting on the balcony.

Aladdin smiles at the sight of her. She’s beautiful – no, not just beautiful. Ethereal. The serene look on her face. The glittering pink veil draped over her hair (he brushed that hair away from her face just last night – even just for that half-second, he had noticed how soft her hair was). If love at first sight existed…

Aladdin reaches into his pocket to brush his fingers against the hair pin he stole from her. He kept wanting to check the whole way here, in case it fell out as he was vaulting over the palace walls. But he’s been at this long enough to know that any half-second of hesitation can cost you.

He won’t hesitate, then. He runs across the garden and over to the wall that comes down from the balcony. He places his hands on the grating and braces a foot, ready to climb.

Then he hears a voice up above, saying, “Still waiting?”

“No, I’m just…he promised.”

He’s late; he knows. But the disappointment in her voice is a stab right to the center of his heart. He met her a day ago; how is it she found the shortest path to the very core of him so quickly?

“I’ll be upstairs if you need me,” says the other woman.

If you need me.

Handmaidens don’t have need of their princesses.

He’d suspected. Hell, he spent most of the past day thinking about it: how odd the princess was acting last night, how expensive Dalia’s bracelet was, how expensive even the hairpin in his pocket is. He’s still not completely sure – the other woman, handmaiden or princess or otherwise, her words don’t indicate for sure.

But Aladdin didn’t survive this long believing the first thing people tell him and not listening to his own intuition.

He waits one moment longer, until he’s sure that Dalia’s friend is gone, and then he starts to climb. It’s easy work, compared to actually getting here. When he pops up above the balcony wall, he props his feet in between the slats so he can rest his arms casually atop the wall.

“Waiting for someone?” he asks, with as much charm as he can muster.

Dalia’s eyes fall on him, and her face is pure, heart-stopping delight. Aladdin’s attempt at a charming smile slips for a moment (adoration – if his head were clearer, that’s the name he’d put to what he’s feeling), but only a moment.

He has some secrets to fish out first.

Just as Aladdin stowed away the adoration on his face, Dalia quickly tucks away her delight. She crosses her arms, raises an eyebrow, and says, “You’re late.” She jerks her head up at the sky. “The moon is well above the minaret.”

Aladdin vaults over the balcony wall and lands lightly on his feet. He brushes off his hands and replies, “Well, next time why don’t you come to me, if you’re so concerned with being punctual?”

Dalia makes an indignant noise. “You’re the one who set the time to meet. And if memory serves, the last time I came to you, we wound up getting chased by the city guard.”

“Sounds like my idea of a good time,” Aladdin replies.

Dalia shakes her head, laughing. Then she holds out a hand. “I believe you have something of mine.”

Aladdin pulls the hairpin out of his pocket and holds it up. “You mean this?” He tilts it this way and that as he pretends to inspect it, letting it catch the moonlight. “Nice hairpin for a handmaiden.”

“It was a gift,” Dalia replies smoothly.

Aladdin’s eyes slip over to her. He’s a good liar himself, and just as good at detecting it in others. “From who?”

“The princess,” Dalia says. “She couldn’t care less about her suitors or their gifts. So sometimes she just gives them to me.”

Aladdin steps in closer, just by a bit. He’s got a fish on the line, and reeling it in is a slow, careful business. “She could give them to the poor.”

All at once, Dalia’s face furrows in thought. “I hadn’t thought of that before.”

“You hadn’t, or she hadn’t?”

The thought is gone, the defiance returned. “What does that mean?”

“I’m just saying…that bracelet, too, that was nice. Expensive. It was your mother’s, you said? What’s your family’s background that she had such a nice bracelet?”

“Why are you asking? If I’d realized you wanted to come back just to interrogate me about my jewels –”

“I wanted to come to see you,” Aladdin rushes to say. He won’t let her walk away thinking this was just a game to him. Yes, he’s making a game of sussing out her secret, but he genuinely wants to know. No, needs to know. A handmaiden is unrealistic; a princess is flat-out impossible. “Just tell me something. Where did you really get this hairpin, Princess?”

Dalia’s face hardens like she’s turned to stone. “I already told you. And I’m not the…”

She trails off as Aladdin steps in closer, close enough that Dalia has to tilt her head up to meet his eye. And she does, defiantly but also lovely. In the daylight, her eyes had been full of warmth and joy. In the night, contrasted against the moonlight spilling over her skin, her eyes are a darkness Aladdin wants to drown in.

(If he could steal this balcony and Dalia with it out of time, he would.)

“You don’t have to pretend to be someone you’re not with me,” he tells her, his voice quiet. His eyes are gentle.

He wants to reach out and brush his fingers against her cheek or in her hair, like he did last night. His eyes rove over her face as he waits for an answer – he’s content to wait forever – and drinks in every detail of her.

“If I tell you,” Dalia replies, “Will you give me my hairpin back?”

Aladdin slips it into his pocket. “Nah.”

He laughs at the look of outrage on Dalia’s face.

“If you’re looking to make a trade, it’s got to be for something I don’t already have. I’ve already got your secret, Princess, so you’ve got to trade me something else.”

“You don’t know that for sure.”

“Ah, you just told me, though, didn’t you?”

Dalia looks furious with herself. She shuts her eyes for a brief second, as if bracing herself against having to tell him who she really is. Then she turns away to face the warm light of her bedroom. The back of her pink dress remains in shadow, and she looks like a flower, emerging into the sunlight.

“I’m not allowed to leave the palace,” she says, clearly frustrated. “And the suitors have been coming more frequently these past few months. I thought I would take my chance while I still have it and sneak out, see the city.”

“But why did you tell me you were the princess’s handmaiden?”

Dalia turns. “I didn’t. You told yourself that, and I just played along.”

Reproachfully, he says, “Dalia.”

She winces. Aladdin catches on a second before she clarifies, “My name is Jasmine. My handmaiden is Dalia.”

“Jasmine,” he says. He knows as he says it that his tone is far too tender, but how could he look at her right now and say her name as though it’s any other name in the world?

“I panicked,” she says. “And, to tell you the truth, I’m sick of men who only look at me for my title and only praise me for my beauty. I didn’t want you to turn into that.”

His mind races to catch up with everything she’s not saying there. She does want him to praise her, though? She does still want him to look at her and want her? Or does she not want him to chase her at all?

Well, here he is, though. Whether she wants him to or not, he ran most of the way here. It’s as close to chasing as you can get when the object of your affection can’t go beyond the palace walls.

She was out on the balcony waiting for him. That’s something. That’s got to count for something.

Aladdin takes a deep breath. He has many shortcomings, but a lack of boldness has never been one of them.

While Jasmine is still on her lie about being a handmaiden – and really, the wince on her face that wrinkles her nose may be the cutest thing Aladdin has ever seen – Aladdin walks toward her. As he does, he pulls her hairpin back out of his pocket.

He stops only when their chests are inches apart. Her eyes are wide, but they don’t leave his. Her mouth hangs slightly open. Aladdin’s eyes flicker down to her lips, for just a second.

He grins and asks, “What will you give me in exchange for your hairpin?”

Jasmine stammers for a moment and falters. That right there is why he’s standing so close. He doesn’t want a witty retort, of which he already knows she’s more than capable. He wants her heart, open and honest. He wants it so badly his own could burst.

Jasmine says, “I – are you – you want money? I thought…”

Hurt flickers over her face, like she thinks this was all a shakedown. Aladdin tilts his head just that tiny bit closer. His expression is completely unguarded, and he hopes it’s having the same effect on Jasmine that she’s having on him. He thinks – or at least hopes – so, because she falls silent, her lips still parted.

Aladdin says, “I was thinking more along the lines of a kiss.”

“A kiss,” she repeats.

“A kiss. How about it, princess? Your hairpin for one little kiss.”

He’s saying the word too much. He’s sure of it. His cockiness, too, is going to put her off. This was a mistake. He should just leave the hairpin and run, cut his losses –

Jasmine is leaning in.

Aladdin stops breathing.

Then her face moves to the side, and his lips merely brush her hair as hers press to his cheek for the barest moment. Still, even that one little moment is enough to leave his skin warm where she kissed it and him with the conviction that her lips are the softest that any woman ever had.

He’s so dumbstruck, he doesn’t notice until it’s too late that she’s plucked the hairpin from his hands and is looking at him in triumph. His hand is still suspended in the air.

“You need to learn to be more specific in your negotiations,” Jasmine says.

“Negotiation, huh? That something you learn, growing up in the palace?” Aladdin asks.

“Among other things.”

“Well, maybe you could teach me? I clearly need a few lessons.”

“Why would I want to teach you how to outsmart me?”

“So I have an excuse to come back.”

She doesn’t reply straight away, but instead beams at the promise of more nighttime visits to come. Then she says, “You clearly know how to make your own. Like my bracelet and my hairpin. What’s next, my necklace?”

Let it be remembered that she was the one who thought of it first, not him.

“Well, what am I going to tell Abu?” Aladdin says. “That I’m coming here just to meet a girl, with no pretext at all?”

“So you’re coming back, then?” Jasmine says.

“Do you – do you want me to?”

A smile like a flower blooms on Jasmine’s face, and it’s all Aladdin can do not to declare himself already madly and deeply in love with her. Madly and deeply in love with a princess. An impossible princess bound to marry a prince.

She knows that.

He knows that.

She knows he knows that.

And yet, she replies, “I’d like that.”

Aladdin reaches out, then, to brush her hair out of her face like he did last night. He lets his fingers linger and trace down the side of her neck, and he savors the way her eyes flutter almost shut.

“Then I’ll be back tomorrow night, Princess,” he promises her.

“And what will be your excuse to Abu?”

Aladdin shrugs, and he starts to walk backward, toward the edge of the balcony. “I could just lie, say I’m out for a nighttime stroll. Maybe say I’m getting a lesson in negotiation. Or, now that I think of it, I should really come back so that I can return this.”

He holds up her necklace: a gold chain with emerald droplets hanging from it. Jasmine’s hand jumps to her throat, searching for it. But it was gone the moment Aladdin brushed his fingers against her neck.

(He would have done that even if it weren’t for the necklace.)

“How did you –”

She’ll piece it together. And if she doesn’t, then she’ll hopefully be more impressed than mad. Aladdin climbs over the balcony’s railing and positions himself for the climb down. Jasmine rushes forward.

“I expect that back,” she tells him.

“Tomorrow night,” he tells her. “I promise. And there won’t be any cheek kisses to get it back this time.”

“What do you know?” she replies. “You’re already a better negotiator.”

“I have a good teacher.”

He smiles at her, and she smiles back, and he lets himself savor it for one more second. Then he starts to climb back down the side of her balcony. She watches for a moment, her dark hair spilling down in front of her.

“Goodnight, Aladdin.”

“Goodnight, Princess.”

He’ll replay the way she said his name over and over as he’s falling asleep later. He’ll remember the way she looked at him as he was asking for a kiss. He’ll recall the feel of her hair and her soft skin beneath his fingers.

He’ll let himself wonder, when it’s dark and the city is quiet and he’s the only one in Agrabah somehow both awake and dreaming, if love at first sight maybe, possibly exists.

But for now, he has to get past the guards and out of the palace. He’ll manage, though. He always does. He’ll have to get good at it, too, if he wants to come back tomorrow night. And the night after that, and the night after that, and the night after that.

(Forever is a word too large to hope for, and it’s too soon to even speak it.)

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think! I'm thinking of doing more oneshots in this "what if" scenario, too (I already have a few romantic moments planned out in my head, whoops).


End file.
